


magic in those eyes

by xxcaribbean



Category: One Direction (Band), Real Person Fiction
Genre: Cute, Fluff, Gen, M/M, turtle!liam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 23:05:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1487446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxcaribbean/pseuds/xxcaribbean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>liam is zayn’s turtle, the only friend he has. and while zayn’s pretty sure he’s like any other ordinary animal, that just may not be the case after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	magic in those eyes

**Author's Note:**

> based off of this gif -
> 
>  

Zayn’s used to not having any friends. He spends his nights doing homework, days at school, and his weekends with his sisters unless they’ve got plans of their own. He’s got no clue how they’re better off than he is in that department though. Surely girls were a lot meaner to one another?

Either way, Zayn makes it a habit to live in his room. It’s nice and safe in there, where no one can bother him, tell him what to do, or throw around rude insults about all the things that are _wrong_ with him.

He’s pretty sure _those_ people are the only thing that’s wrong, but it’s not like they’d agree.

So he spends his afternoons dreaming, creating characters and stories through his art. The sketchbooks that litter his room, which can be found in every crook and crevice of his four walls, are full of imaginations and things he thought would be incredibly cool if they were real.

It sounds lonely, and it is sometimes, but Zayn, more often than not, has found a friend in Liam, his turtle.

See, he hadn’t mean to bring a pet home, and he’d only been allowed to keep it if it meant that he’d take full responsibility of the little creature. His mother hadn’t been too pleased the day Zayn had come back dirty, mud staining his blue jeans and his white sneakers because he’d been too busy at the pond, sketching what wildlife he could find.

Liam had been sitting on the edge of a bank, a small little thing. There’d been other turtles there too, but their shells were at least twice the size of the poor little bugger, and Zayn had felt terrible. How the little green turtle survived out here, he hadn’t known, but Zayn had been determined to make him something he wouldn’t ever be.

By filling the pages of his sketchpad of a turtle who had no name at that point, Zayn had the capability of creating the animal a new life, one who grew in size a little bit everyday. Eventually there came a point where Zayn had drawn a cape around the neck of dear Liam, making him a superhero in turtle form. While Zayn had giggled at his absurdity, he’d looked down at Liam, tilted his head and figured it was perfect either way.

Now, at the time, Zayn might’ve been called crazy, and he’s perfectly okay with that, but well, after retelling of his ideas, he’d picked up the turtle, and he swears, will forever do so, that it blinked and smiled at him.

That’s the main reason he brought Liam home. The name hadn’t come about for another three days, but Zayn knew that he needed the perfect name.

So, Liam it was. Zayn’s only friend. A turtle.

—

Veronica laughs at him sometimes. She knows how much Liam means to Zayn, but still, he’s a turtle, and he probably shouldn’t be so attached to it because, and as Veronica put it once, “It’s gonna die one of these days, yeah? _Then_ what are you gonna do?”

Which led to Veronica looking at him with pity when the tears welled up in his eyes.

Zayn doesn’t like to think about it.

He’s also found he’s drawn a gravestone in his book.

“Damnit,” he mutters. He turns the pencil around, refuses to keep such a thing in his book full of life. Sometimes he thinks it’s bad luck erasing his art because even if such things do exist in the reality he lives in, it’s still important to hold on to every bit of stuff that’s come from his own hand. “No, that’s not good. I can’t have that.”

Liam’s on the carpet next to Zayn as he lays on his stomach, quickly trying to erase all of the gray. He possibly goes about it a little too hard because in his frustration, he rips the page.

“Fuck.”

There’s no point fixing it now, so Zayn rips out the page, lifts up his arm to throw it into the rubbish bin, noticing that Liam’s just staring at him. “What?” he asks, brows furrowed. “You know I cuss when I’m angry, but I’ll try not to do it again. Sorry, Liam.”

And he does feel sorry. Liam’s got these wide brown eyes that just look so sad sometimes, and Zayn wonders what goes on his that little head of his. Whether Liam knows what he’s really saying, Zayn’s not sure, but he’d like to think he’s listening at the very least. “Veronica upset me again; that’s all. My mind wouldn’t be drifting if she just kept her mouth shut. She doesn’t get it, does she?” He sighs in frustration, reaches forward to pet Liam’s shell. “Like, she’s got friends, and people that care about her. What do I have? Nothing but a turtle and silly dreams.”

Liam bites him.

“Wha-” Zayn pulls his hand back, shocked and a little confused. “What was _that_? Liam, don’t do that. It hurts.” His finger’s red now, no blood in sight, but that doesn’t mean it won’t bruise or something.

The animal bows its head, walks forward just a tad too. Liam’s legs are quite short, and it takes him forever and a day to walk around, but he’s a fighter too, and obviously there’s something he’s trying to say.

So, Zayn carefully reaches out his hand again, wary that Liam might nip him again. However, he’s surprised when Liam nudges him, a peace offering.

“It’s okay. I’m not angry at you.”

Zayn’s pretty sure Liam blinks again in order to tell him that he understands. And then everything is right between them, Zayn going back to his sketchpad while Liam idly sits there and watches him do his work.

—

There’s a particularly awful day at school, and Zayn ends up in his room crying. He’d run up the stairs as fast as possible before anyone could see, especially his mother, threw his backpack off his shoulders before diving onto his bed, face buried into his pillows.

Kids are nasty and cruel, but they’re not always right, and even while Zayn continues to repeat that to himself, something his mother had told him to think about any time the other kids picked on him, it does nothing to soothe the heartache.

Zayn just wants to be _liked_ , wants friends, want someone to get excited over stuff like he does. His mother’s great, and so is his baba, always interested in what he has to say, but Zayn wants _others_ to like him too. His parents are most likely biased anyway.

It takes a good half hour to calm down, finally getting up from the bed to dig through his bag for his homework. He’s got a desk in the corner of his room that he uses for his school stuff, so he takes a seat and begins. It’s a good distraction and a perfect view into Liam’s habitat. He’s got it made, Zayn thinks, because there’s plants and water and man, sometimes Zayn wishes he were a turtle too.

No homework. No mean people. It seems like a very lovely life.

He wrinkles his nose as Liam unveils himself from a mass of plants, chewing on a leafy green. “Seriously, why do you get to be a turtle? Out of all the things I had to be in the world, I made it as a human.”

Zayn shakes his head, but leaves Liam to his food. His concentration is lacking though because every five minute interval, Zayn finds that he just can’t focus. There’s the desperate amount of trying, but nothing works.

Especially when he finds that Liam’s now near the glass of his tank, sitting on a rock and looking about ready to smash his face up against it in order to make it known that he wants out. Whether turtles are that smart, Zayn doesn’t know, but his heart swells, and immediately, he reaches in to remove Liam from his confines.

“Hi,” Zayn says, holding Liam carefully in his hands. His little legs kick and squirm, but stop as soon as Liam notices that Zayn’s got a good grip on him, won’t let him go for anything. “Bet you’re lonely in here too, huh? Should I get you a turtle friend? Goodness, what have I done? Kidnapped you, talked your ears off, and then I leave you here alone.”

Liam blinks, not a good enough response for Zayn to gauge his reaction. “I’m sorry about that. Shit, I probably took you away from your family, didn’t I?”

And as much as Liam’s supposed to cheer Zayn up, he thinks that maybe today was really bad on him mentally because the wave of loneliness crashes over onto Liam too, and the situation that Zayn put him in. He hadn’t even asked - not that there’d be a response, but still. “Would you want to go back?”

Zayn’s not strictly educated on all things turtle related. Sure, he’d had to do research on how to care for Liam so he wouldn’t end up dying, but that hadn’t meant he’d gone around looking for stuff about family and the like. Liam probably misses his home and everything he knew.

“You probably never wanted to be my friend either, did you?” Zayn asks quietly. “Like, I stole you away and forced you to be here instead. Maybe I’m really that terrible?”

The question is left unanswered because Zayn’s mother interrupts his one-sided discussion. He never gets to finish it either because his mother wants him downstairs to help with dinner.

Zayn makes sure to give Liam a kiss on the head before he sets him back down in his tank. “I’m sorry, Liam. I just wanted a friend.”

And then he’s gone, disappearing from the room because Zayn’s positive he wouldn’t be able to take Liam looking back at him, wide innocent eyes and all.

—

Zayn dreams that night. It’s all good things, but that doesn’t stop him from tossing and turning. At some point, he settles though, not fully awake to know why he’s able to get back to sleep so easily.

However, maybe the answer is there when he wakes up about thirty minutes before his alarm is set to go off for school. His bedroom is partially lit up by the early morning sun, but it’s just enough for Zayn to feel the tiredness take over him again, leaving him to wonder whether he should drift back to sleep or go ahead and get up.

He chooses the former, and he swears he’s nearly asleep when he hears a soft _'shit'_ whispered. At first, Zayn thinks he’s imagining it, but something drops onto the floor, and then he’s sitting up, staring at a boy who’s sitting on Zayn’s desk, looking very much like a deer caught in the headlights.

“Hello!” he chirps.

Zayn opens his mouth to scream.

“No,” the lad says, placing his finger over his own lips. “I’m Liam!”

Which does nothing for Zayn because there’s a strange boy in his room, sitting on top of his desk, and it’s weird. He shouldn’t be here, at all. This is Zayn’s room, his house. Who the hell is this guy to sneak in, especially if he doesn’t know him?

“Zayn?”

“ _Get out!_ I’m giving you the chance to get out before I scream. Go,” Zayn snaps harshly.

The boy just looks wounded before sliding off the desk, wringing his hands. He looks small, a faint blush on his cheeks, hair shaggy. “It’s- Zayn, it’s _Liam_.”

As if that’s supposed to help.

It doesn’t, at first, until the boy named Liam looks over at the tank that looks very much empty.

“What’d you do to Liam?” Zayn cries when he notices that the boy no longer has his attention on him, Zayn definitely not registering the fact that well, Liam’s still there, just not in the way he should be. “Oh my god, _where is he_?”

Zayn clambers out of his bed, studies the tank and even goes so far as to sift through the plants in case maybe Liam is hidden somewhere within.

But the boy named Liam just chuckles until Zayn glares at him. “This is rude and mean. Where’s my turtle?”

Liam with brown hair and brown eyes eventually realizes that Zayn doesn’t actually understand, so he straightens up and blinks, tries his best to give a good turtle impression. When that doesn’t work, Liam sighs. “It’s me, Zayn. _I’m_ your turtle.”

“But you’re not a turtle,” Zayn states. “I don’t like this joke. It’s definitely not funny.” He swallows, makes another attempt at looking in Liam’s tank, but still, there’s nothing.

“It’s not a joke,” Liam hesitantly smiles. “It’s still me, I promise.” And he proves it too, sorta. He extends his hands, turns them over for Zayn to see the green skin that runs up his arms until it’s disappearing under his shirt.

Which, as Zayn looks closer, is his shirt.

“ _Holy shit_.”

“Yeah,” Liam chuckles. “I know.”

“You’re a boy,” Zayn breathes, a smile just beginning to form until it breaks out all across his features. “ _Leeyum_.” And then Zayn’s surging forward for a hug, a warm, friendly, genuine hug that Liam can actually reciprocate because he’s human. “I can’t believe this.”

“I can.”

And they stand like that for a bit, until Zayn draws back, happiness written all over his face. He’s just about to ask Liam another question when his mother calls his name. He realizes it’s nearly time for him to wake up at this point, his mother probably thinking he’s still in bed.

“Chin up,” Liam says. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

“Really?” Zayn looks a bit skeptical, like maybe he’s dreaming this, or something. It’d be cruel if that were the case, but Zayn wouldn’t say it’s not possible. “Are you sure?”

“‘Course,” Liam says, looking astonished that Zayn would ask such a thing. “I believe you requested a friend.”

Zayn’s mother calls his name again, and he winces, knows he has to go before she comes to get him herself. It’d be very difficult to explain just how and why he’s got a boy named Liam in his room. He figures telling her that he’s his turtle wouldn’t really fly by her all that well.

“Okay.” Zayn nods. “You better keep your word, then.” He points at Liam just before grinning. “Feel free to look around, yeah? I’ll be back before you know it.”

Liam bows, or something similar to it, before Zayn’s brushing past him to head for the door. He’s gotta get ready and eat breakfast and ugh, this sucks that he’s got to go a whole school day when he’s got Liam here, but he figures sucking it up has got to be worth it, especially if it means his turtle who-is-now-a-boy will be here waiting for him.

His hand is just on the knob of his bedroom door, and while Zayn knows he’s got to turn it and walk through the threshold, something stops him from doing so. There’s a little thought in the back of his mind, one he needs to settle first before he can leave, so he turns back around to find Liam leaning up against his desk now.

“How?” he simply asks, just one question he needs answered. It’ll satisfy his curiosity until he can make it back here later this afternoon.

Liam smiles slowly, shrugs his shoulders and winks (well, he tries because like, Zayn giggles when one eyes closes, closely followed by the other. He feels oddly happy that he’s got a turtle who can’t wink for shit). “You know that fairytale frog stuff?”

Zayn purses his lips, thinking back on all those odd stories his sister’s had grown up with. “I think so, yeah.”

His confusion does not go unnoticed, and the thing is, Liam seems to only want to add to it. “That’s horse shit. Trust me, frogs think they’re know-it-alls, but really, all they can do is croak up some charm. Real magic comes from the unexpected.”

And well, maybe Zayn should be concerned. Like, really worried that all of this is fake, but the sound of his mother’s voice is closer and a lot more thin because he’s yet to listen to her.

So, he gives an easy okay as if he understands what Liam’s really saying, and even if he doesn’t, all Zayn has to do is look into those big brown eyes. They’re exactly the same when Liam was a turtle, open and honest, and every bit as humble as Zayn knew he could be.

Zayn gives one last look and a parting smile before he opens his bedroom door and closes it behind him.

—

School lasts for nearly seven hours, fifteen minutes, and forty-three seconds. Zayn counted.

There’s also nothing like the anxiety of anticipation, but even if it eats him up, Zayn goes home and runs to his room just like always, doesn’t break the habit he’s been into for years because he’s had no other interruptions with his lack of a social life.

He shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s a lie to say that he’s not, especially when Zayn discovers that things are just as they always have been.

Liam’s always been reliable, a constant. Zayn’s pretty sure he’s got nothing to worry about when he finds Liam waiting for him just like always. Just like he said he would.

Only this time, it’s a little different. Now, Zayn’s met with a big smile, a few longer limbs, and the ability to hear Liam tell him that he hadn’t ever really been alone.

It’s good to know he won’t be any longer. That’s now a guarantee.


End file.
